Here’s my theory: 1968 was the greatest ever year for music. Here’s why: the record industry, awash with cash, was delighted to see the frighteningly radical hippy movement shape itself into something they could at least try and sell the arse out of. Take an element of Aquarian oddness, swirl in a homeopathic amount of LSD imagery, a bunch of people whose minds were blown by Dylan and the Beatles and let them loose on a studio system still driven by super-producers, session players and gimme-a-hit-now A&R men. If we were to invent a word for this softly-grooving, sitar-scented paradise, that word would be not psychedelic, but psychidyllic. So many of what were supposed to be big, mainstream records from that year are backlit with the most striking innocence and charm, a sense of possibility and hope. The most incredible explosion had already happened and these records, like individual slivers of magical, cosmic debris, just kept on raining down. 46 years later there are still hundreds of these things out there…

And so, The Split Level, who released just one LP on Dot Records in late February 1968, arrived as artists like The Free Design, The Rotary Connection and Cashman, Pistilli and West were shaping a new, highly-melodic, gently-weird, post-freakout aesthetic. Formed in 1967, the mighty Level were actor and singer Liz Seneff (vocals, tambourine - formerly of ultra-folkie Dave Guard’s Whiskeyhill Singers), Michael Lobel (guitar, flute), Lenny Roberts (vocals, guitar - could he be the same LR who would go on to produce Cher?), and Al Dana (vocals, bass and sitar - formerly of the MGM Records’ Garrett Brown / Al Dana folk duo). This is a record driven by a relentless wave of feel-good pop melodies - its eyes positively blaze with tartrazine-fuelled, can-do optimism - all mixed up with glorious sunshine psychedelia, none-more-timely “raga” twanglings and, oh yes, full-on, churchified, ecclesiastical chanting.

A contemporary review noted their blend of “today’s rock and medieval hymn madrigal” admitting, “they go Eastern” at times. Have you fallen in love with it yet? You will. Here are some amazing moments: You Can’t Go jangles like The Byrds after a doppio espresso marathon, Equipment is a song about being mentally (and physically) tripped-up by those “miles of dials” on all your equipment, although to be fair, “what can compare to the sound and the throb of the bass, cutting through at the flick of a knob?” is one of rock’s great lyrical questions. Speculator is a Gregorian chant led folk-theatre piece which is even better than that sounds while Charles Trenet’s Children Are Bored On Sunday is pure dream-sequence genius that turns into another great heart-bursting hymn. As does Hymn (“I thought my voice made God rejoice and voiced my thoughts sky bound…”), all of which might make you think there was a subtext here. And there was. Unlike most of their contemporaries, Split Level weren’t afraid of taking their songs of praise to the people, performing in churches billed as: Split Level, in Concert With the Lord. And if that doesn’t convince you we’re dealing with an amazing year for music, perhaps nothing will.